Flinx in Flux (30 page)

“Everyone has a choice.” He lowered his gaze, tired of staring. Tired, period. “It’s just that most people don’t have the guts to make the right one.”

“I’m sorry, I’m so very sorry.” She was crying now. “They had you here in that damn box before I knew anything. It was too late for me to stop them. I went along hoping to help you later, somehow, when they’d let down their guard. You’ve got to believe that! You heard me shout a warning, didn’t you? You just heard me tell you that she was responsible for everything that’s happened, that this is all her doing.”

“Yes, I heard you. That’s why you’re still walking instead of lying on the floor with the rest. I know you’re telling the truth, or else you’re the most skillful liar I’ve ever encountered.”

“If you know that, if you can sense that, then you must also know that I love you.”

He turned away from her. “I don’t know anything of the sort. Your feelings are strong, but no matter what you say, I can tell that they’re still confused and uncertain. One moment you say you love me, the next you’re afraid of me. Hot and cold. I don’t want that kind of relationship.”

“Give me a chance, Flinx,” she pleaded. “I’m so terribly confused.”

He whirled to face her again. “How do you think
I’m
feeling? That’s the one set of emotions I can never get rid of. After all that’s happened, how can you think I could ever trust you with anything, much less with my life? Not that it matters, anyway. You can’t share my life. Nobody can. Because, ironically enough, Vandervort may have been right about that. I can’t, I won’t take the chance of endangering someone else in the event I do turn out to be dangerous.

“I was uncertain about that before. Now I’m not. I shouldn’t have let myself get involved with you in the first place. That much of it’s my fault.”

“Flinx, I know what you are. It doesn’t frighten me anymore. You need someone like me. Someone who can give you understanding and sympathy and affection—and love.”

“Someone to help me be human. Is that it?”

“No, dammit!” Despite her best efforts to repress them, the tears began afresh. “That’s not what I mean at all.”

He wanted her to be lying, but she was not.

“While I was asleep, or unconscious, or drugged, or whatever, my mind roamed freely in a way it never has before. I feel better about myself than I ever have. It was more than a rejuvenating rest, Clarity. Something happened to me while I was in that box. I can’t define it yet because I’m not sure what it was. But while I was in there I sensed things. Some of them were beautiful and some were frightening and others were inexplicable, and until I can figure them out, I need to be by myself.

“You go back to whipping out custom genes and designer biologicals, and I’ll get back to my studying. That’s the way it has to be.”

“You’re not being fair,” she sobbed.

“Once I was told that the universe isn’t a fair place. The more I see of it, the more convinced I am of the rightness of that observation.”

The rumbling began as a hum in the ears and a subtle quivering underfoot. The two met somewhere in the vicinity of the stomach. Not an earthquake but something much more pervasive. Clarity rushed to the plastic crates for support while Flinx stood his ground as best he was able. Pip stayed aloft while Scrap finally came to a decision and landed cautiously on Clarity’s shoulder. That was painful for Flinx to see, but he could not waste time worrying about it now.

Of more immediate concern was the fact that the center of the floor was crumbling beneath his feet. He scrambled to one side, staring as the stelacrete and duralloy mesh turned to powder and vanished into the gaping maw of a vast dark pit some three meters in diameter.

The huge creature that stuck its head out of the hole and gazed curiously around the room was as tall as the opening was wide. Its dense fur was mottled with splotches, and it must have weighed close to a ton. The flat muzzle ended in a tiny nose above which a pair of plate-sized yellow eyes hung like lanterns. The ears were comically undersized.

Placing two immense, seven-digited paws on the edge of the hole, it boosted itself into the room, the furry head barely clearing the ceiling. Clarity goggled at it in disbelief as if it were something coalesced whole from a fever dream. Flinx flinched, too, but for a different reason entirely. At that point the monster saw him—and smiled hugely.

“Hello again, Flinx-friend,” it said.

Except its mouth did not move.

Chapter Seventeen

Clarity heard it, too. She was mumbling dazedly to herself. “There’s no such thing as a true telepath. There’s no such thing.”

“I’m afraid there is,” Flinx said with another sigh. He turned to the monster. “Hello, Fluff. It’s been a long time.”

“Long time, Flinx-friend!” It was a mental boom. The massive Ujurrian trundled over to the red-haired young man and rested both massive paws on his shoulders. “Flinx-friend is well?”

“Very well, thank you.” He was somewhat surprised to find that the mind-to-mind, human-to-Ujurrian communication was easier this time than it had been years ago, when he had first encountered Fluff’s species on their Church-proscribed world. It was no longer difficult to understand.

Fluff nodded approvingly as two more giant Ujurrians popped out of the hole like ursinoid jack-in-the-boxes. Flinx recognized Bluebright and Moam. They examined their surroundings with the boundless curiosity of their kind.

“Flinx-friend’s mind is clearing out. Not as much mud inside as before.” Fluff tapped the side of his head with a fat finger.

Flinx gestured to his right. “That’s my friend, Clarity.”

Fluff started toward her, overflowing with gruff good feelings. “Hello, Clarity-friend.” She backed away from him until she was flush against the wall. The Ujurrian halted and looked back at Flinx. “Why your friend frightened of Fluff?”

“It’s not you, Fluff. It’s your size.”

“Oh-ho!” The Ujurrian promptly dropped to all fours. “This better, Clarity-friend?”

She hesitantly stepped away from the cold wall. “It’s better.” Her gaze rose, and she found Flinx watching her amusedly. “These are friends of yours?”

“Can’t you tell by now?”

“But how did they get here? What are they?”

“They’re Ujurrians. I think I mentioned them before.”

“The world Under Edict, yes. That means nobody can get in or out.”

“Apparently someone neglected to inform the Ujurrians of that. As to how they got here, I’m as interested as you are.”

“Heard you.” Bluebright’s mental voice was as distinct from Fluff’s as it was from Flinx’s. “Her mindlight is bright.”

Clarity frowned uncertainly. “What does that mean?”

“It means you have a strong mental aura. To the Ujurrians everything is like a light, brighter or darker to a varying degree. Don’t be intimidated by their size. Oh, they’re quite capable of taking a human being apart like a wooden toy, but we’re old allies. And if it makes you feel better, they’re mostly vegetarians. They don’t like to eat anything that generates ‘light.’ ”

Scrap cowered against Clarity’s neck. It was the first time Flinx had ever seen a minidrag show fear. To the young flying snake, the Ujurrians’ emotional auras must have appeared overpowering. Pip did not fear because she remembered.

“Heard you calling,” Moam explained as he examined the unconscious forms scattered about the room. “Came fast as we could to offer help.”

“Calling?” For a moment Flinx forgot Clarity. “I wasn’t calling. I wasn’t even conscious.” He tried to recall what it had been like floating beneath the surface of the lake. Little remained of that memory, that fading mystic melody of thoughts suspended in morphogas.

“How did you people get here?” Clarity forced herself not to gaze into the black pit. “Flinx told me you made him a ship.”

“A ship, yes,” Fluff said proudly. “A
Teacher
for the teacher. For us, we don’t like ships. Noisy and confining. We only built his because it fits the game.”

“Game?” She turned back to Flinx. “What game?”

“The game of civilization.” He spoke absently, still trying to remember. “The Ujurrians love games, so before I left Ulru-Ujurr I started teaching them that one. By the time the
Teacher
was finished they were getting very good at it. I can’t imagine what stage they’ve reached by now.”

“Like some parts of the game,” Bluebright said. “Don’t like others. Keep the parts we like, throw out the ones we don’t.”

“Very sensible. How’s the tunnel digging coming along?”

“You aren’t making any sense.” Clarity couldn’t disguise her confusion.

“It doesn’t have to make sense. Listen and you’ll learn a few things.”

“Going very well,” Fluff told him. “Still have many more tunnels to dig. Heard you calling. Decided to dig a new tunnel. Fastest digging we’ve ever done, but teacher was in trouble. Got here too late anyways maybe?”

“I’m okay.” It was Flinx’s turn to frown. If he had not known from experience what the Ujurrians were capable of, he could never have asked the next question. “Are you telling us that you
tunneled
here from Ulru-Ujurr?”

Fluff made a face. “Where else we tunnel from?”

Smiling to show he meant no offense even though he knew they could read the same thing in his mind, he said, “Clarity-friend is right. That doesn’t make any sense.”

The huge Ujurrian chuckled, his voice full of mock puzzlement. “Then how we get here? Was hard work, Flinx-friend, but also fun.”

“That’s it. I’m lost,” Clarity mumbled.

“Not lost,” Moam said earnestly, misunderstanding her thoughts as well as her words. “You start tunnels. Make bend here, then twist, then wrap around like so and so, and lo! There you are.”

“I wonder if they ‘tunnel’ through space-plus or null-space,” Flinx murmured in awe. “Or someplace else the theoretical mathematicians haven’t invented yet. How did you find
me?
Can you tap into my specific thought signature across all those parsecs?”

“Wasn’t easy,” said Moam. “So we had somebody come and look.”

Flinx’s brow wrinkled. “Come and look? But who—”

A voice from behind made him jump. “Who you think?”

It was Maybeso, looking dour and distressed as always. Even for an Ujurrian, Maybeso was unique. His fellows thought him quite mad. If the inhabitants of Ulru-Ujurr were an anomaly among intelligent races, then Maybeso was the anomaly of anomalies.

“Hello, Maybeso.”

“Good-bye, Flinx-friend.” The giant ursinoid vanished as silently and mysteriously as he had appeared. He was not a talker.

Flinx saw Clarity staring. She had convinced herself she was beyond shock, but Maybeso’s brief appearance had proved otherwise. “He goes where he wants,” Flinx explained apologetically, “and he doesn’t have to use a tunnel. Nobody knows how he does it, not even the other Ujurrians, and he doesn’t tell. They think he’s a little strange.”

“Not strange. Mad.” A fourth Ujurrian emerged from the bottomless pit in the center of the room. Looking like a cross between a grizzly bear and a lemur, Softsmooth plopped down on the floor and began cleaning herself. That was when Flinx noted the softly glowing rings each of them wore.

“These?” Bluebright responded to his inquiry. “Toys that help with the digging. We built your ship. We made these. All part of the game, yes?”

“Wait a minute. The other one.” Clarity was gesturing weakly. “The one that appeared behind you, Flinx. Where did he come from? And where did he go?”

“Nobody knows where he comes from,” Moam said, “and nobody knows where Maybeso goes.”

“I think I’m beginning to understand,” she said slowly, “why Ulru-Ujurr is under Church Edict.”

“You have to keep in mind,” Flinx told her, “that the Ujurrians are complete innocents. The AAnn were beginning illegal exploitation of their world when I showed up there. At that time the Ujurrians had no concept of civilization or modern technology or anything related to either. They lived and ate and mated and dug their tunnels. Playing the game, they called it. So I introduced them to a new game, the game of ‘civilization.’ It didn’t take them very long to learn how to build a starship. That was my
Teacher.
I can’t imagine what they’ve learned by now. How to make rings, apparently.”

“How to have more fun!” Fluff roared. “Got here too late to help Flinx-friend—but not too late to have more fun. Had to find you, anyway. New element has entered the game. Very intriguing. You would say, ‘Involves inexplicable astrophysical and mathematical metastasis.’ ”

“Maybe
I
wouldn’t,” Flinx said carefully.

“We ought to get out of here.” Clarity was studying the stairway. “More of those fanatics might come looking for their friends.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. There are Ujurrians here.” He spoke to her, but he was thinking at Fluff. “What do you mean when you speak of a ‘new element’ in the game? I thought the rules I set down for you were fairly straightforward.”

“Were, yes. You remember you also taught us that not everyone plays the game by the rules. You explained cheating. This is a kind of cheating.”

Softsmooth took up the refrain, her mental voice distinctly feminine compared with that of the three big males. “You know we have always dug the tunnels, Flinx-friend. Found some interesting ideas for new tunnels in the information the cold minds left behind. Started a tunnel that way.” She smiled, revealing long fangs and bone-crushing teeth. “We can dig all kinds of tunnels; dig through rock, through sand, through what you call spacetime.”

“Fun to dig to other worlds,” Moam commented. “Same world gets boring.” He was inspecting one of the laser pistols Vandervort’s bodyguards had dropped. Flinx was not worried. All Moam was interested in was the pistol’s construction.

Softsmooth carried on. “Been digging many tunnels to other worlds.” She indicated the empty pit. Flinx was careful not to go too close to the edge. If one fell in, there was no telling where and when one might stop.

“Dug tunnel to place your people call Horseye, natives call Tslamaina. Found an interesting thing there.”

“Big machine,” Moam put in. “Biggest machine we’ve seen ever.” The usual feeling of frivolity was absent from his thought.

“Did some studying,” Softsmooth continued. “After a while something really very strange detected us studying and came to chase us away, but we left before it got there.” She smiled again. “We can move quickly when we have to, you know. Found smaller similar things all linked to this one big thing on the Horseye world. Links go like our tunnels, only a lot smaller.”

“What is horse?” Fluff asked suddenly.

“A Terran quadruped,” Flinx told him. “They’re no longer common.”

“Too bad. Image is nice.”

“Shut up, Fluff,” Softsmooth admonished him. “I was talking.”

“Don’t tell me to shut up.”

They exchanged blows, the lightest of which would have killed a large man instantly, before settling back down as though nothing had happened. Clarity had run to Flinx’s side at the start of the fight, and he reluctantly allowed her to remain next to him. His mind was clear, but his emotions were in turmoil.

“Before the really very strange something arrived to chase us away, we found out what the machine was all about.”

“It’s an alarm,” Moam muttered. Flinx saw that he was busily taking the laser pistol apart, his huge fingers picking delicately at the internal circuitry.

“What kind of alarm?”

“To warn against something. Against a big danger. Except that the people it was supposed to warn have all gone away a long time ago.” In Flinx’s mind the mental picture of “long ago” that Softsmooth was projecting stretched into infinity. That was impressive, because the Ujurrians never exaggerated.

“You said you had to find me, anyway. Because of this?” All four ursinoids nodded in unison. “Why come to me? I know nothing of a world called Horseye, much less any weird machines on it.”

“You are the teacher,” Fluff said simply. And then, shockingly, “Also because you are involved somehow.”

“Me?” Pip did a little hop on her master’s shoulder before settling back down. “How can I be involved when this is the first I’ve heard of it?”

“The feeling is there.” Even Fluff was now communicating with great seriousness. “You are the key to something, whether the machine or the danger or something else we do not yet know. We would like to know. It would help in the game. This danger worries us.”

If it was real and it worried the Ujurrians, Flinx knew, then everyone else ought to be properly terrified. “Is the danger imminent?”

“Imminent?” wide-eyed Bluebright echoed.

“Is it going to strike soon?” Flinx inquired tiredly. In their innocence, the Ujurrians could instantly comprehend the most complex mechanical and mathematical concepts while simultaneously misunderstanding much simpler terms.

“Do not know. You must help us to understand this thing,” Softsmooth said. “You are the teacher.”

“I’m not a teacher!” he replied angrily. “I’m just a student. By now any one of you has more accumulated knowledge stored in your minds than I ever will.”

“But you know the game,” Fluff reminded him. “The game of civilization. That we are still learning.”

“This is somehow part of the game,” Bluebright said. All four were staring at him, and he was unable to look into those vast yellow eyes and lie. Here it was again. Just when he was certain, he was through with someone else’s problems, another set materialized to take their place. If he insisted, they would go away and leave him alone. If he insisted.

They were pleading silently. It did him no good to turn away because that meant he had to look at Clarity, which was just as bad. There was no escape for him from himself. Not in this room, at this time, in this place. Maybe not anywhere, ever.

“I can’t do anything to help,” he said finally, “because I don’t know anything about this. Can’t you understand that?”

“Understand ignorance, Flinx-friend,” Softsmooth said without hesitation. “Can fix that.”

Flinx was taken aback. “How? By taking me to Horseye?” He eyed the black pit uneasily.

“No. Can show you a little, maybe. We cannot see it ourselves but can help you to see. Will not be dangerous—hopefully.” Fluff had come over to put a paw on Flinx’s shoulder. “We must know, Flinx-friend. Is important to us, too. It might be serious enough to stop the game. To stop all games.”

Was there really anything to think about? Did he really have any choice? Did he ever?

“How are you going to show me? Is this threat nearby?”

“It is very, very far away. We can only guess where. You will have to trust us. Teacher must trust his pupils.”